News

"If you hear the whispers in his forest, he's come to eat your soul." Dark Sky Films has revealed an official trailer for The Soul Eater, a new horror thriller film from the acclaimed French horror filmmakers Julien Maury & Alexandre Bustillo. This first premiered at the 2024 Rotterdam Film Festival earlier this year, with stops at other genre film festivals throughout 2024. From the two creators of Inside (2007), The Deep House, and Leatherface. When violent and gruesome deaths starts plaguing a small mountain village, an old legend about a malevolent creature resurfaces. Based on the French novel of the same name (Le Mangeur d’âmes) written by Alexis Laipsker. Who is "The Soul Eater" coming for next? The French horror film stars Emmanuel Lanzi, Malik Zidi, Paul Hamy, Sandrine Bonnaire, and Virginie Ledoyen. This trailer is for the English dubbed version - which will be added to its release in the US this fall.

Celebrated Taiwanese director Edward Yang‘s penultimate feature is a deceptively simple and straightforward affair. “Mahjong” poses as an over-the-top, soap opera-esque tale full of petty criminals, blackmail, sentimental manipulation and unrequited love. But it also offers a bittersweet chronicle of life, love, greed and economic opportunism in the booming, bustling Taipei of the late 1990s.

Mahjong is screening at San Diego Asian Film Festival

The film follows a group of rowdy young men who share the same apartment while ripping off other people for a living – and almost, it seems, for a hobby. Their leader is Red Fish (Tsung Sheng Tang), an enterprising young hustler who sees the world as one huge scamming opportunity with only the capitalist sky for a limit. His father is a fugitive businessman and con man who has made a fortune out of Taiwan’s roaring economy, and Red Fish has assimilated to his...

Exclusive: Homecoming and The Beach star Virginie Ledoyen has boarded Channel 5 series The Au Pair opposite David Suchet.

The Cesar-nominated French actress will play a whistleblower in the thriller, whose pivotal role kicks off in the opening scene and spans the rest of the show.

From Pernel Media and MK1 Studios, The Au Pair follows Zoe Dalton (Sally Bretton), who seems to have it all, including successful husband Chris (Kenny Doughty). When she hires an au pair, Sandrine (Ludmilla Makowski), the beguiling young French woman triggers an unsettling shift in the household as instincts and suspicions arise, hinting at hidden agendas.

The show for the Paramount UK network is Poirot icon Suchet’s first TV role for six years and he plays George, Zoe’s diabetic father who moves next door.

Having been Cesar-nominated for 1995’s A Single Girl, Ledoyen achieved international fame opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in The Beach,...

French filmmakers Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo, the duo behind Inside, Leatherface, and The Deep House, step outside of horror ever so slightly for their latest, The Soul Eater. The adaptation of Alexis Laipsker‘s novel, penned by Annelyse Batrel and Ludovic Lefebvre, dabbles in the supernatural to lend atmosphere and intrigue to a standard investigative thriller. While its procedural elements may feel more rote, at least in an era inundated by crime thrillers, Maury and Bustillo pull from their horror toolkit and plunge into dark subject matter with aplomb.

Nestled in the French mountains is Roquenoir, a sleepy village on the cusp of becoming a full-blown ghost town. Just when it’s on the brink of being forgotten, a grisly murder so ruthless and inexplicable draws the attention of authorities beyond Roquenoir. Commander Elisabeth Guardiano (Virginie Ledoyen) arrives in town on assignment to investigate the murder, coinciding with Captain...

Stars: Virginie Ledoyen, Paul Hamy, Sandrine Bonnaire, Francis Renaud | Written by Annelyse Batrel, Ludovic Lefebvre | Directed by Alexandre Bustillo, Julien Maury

[Note: With the film screening as part of this year’s Fantasia Film Festival, here’s a reposting of my review of The Soul Eater from its screening at Glasgow Frightfest earlier this year]

Two detectives with entirely different work methods are sent to the sleepy French mountain town of Roquenoir. One is investigating a series of gruesome deaths. The other is searching for some missing local children. Soon, they realise their cases are connected… by an old folklore legend of a malevolent creature, the terrifying incarnation of the Soul Eater.

The Soul Eater is a suspenseful tale of small-town horror, very much akin to similar films set in abandoned “ghost” towns. The kinds of towns synonymous with closely guarding its secrets and a weariness of outsiders. And here the audience is very much an outsider, learning what’s happening at the same time as the film’s two protagonists – Franck...

Every now and then, even at a busy festival like Fantasia 2024, one film stands out to such a degree that one knows one will never forget it. The Soul Eater begins as a murder mystery and unfolds into something that might be a monster movie of the genuinely chilling variety. Exactly where it ends up is less clear than you might think immediately after watching it. There are intentionally obscure elements in its otherwise tight plotting, and there’s an innate complexity to the folklore it engages with. Here, the material, the psychological and the supernatural are closely intertwined.

Several children have already disappeared from surrounding villages in this remote corner of Northeastern France when we arrive at the scene of a bloody murder. Is it connected? Commander Elizabeth Guardiano (Virginie Ledoyen) doesn’t think so. She’s annoyed that her work at the crime scene is being interrupted by a man.

The 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival descends on Montreal July 18 for 3 weeks of wild, and wondrous cinema. Included among the official selections in the 2024 program are some of the years most anticipated horror releases, hidden gems from around the world, and even free events with acclaimed filmmakers, including Mike Flanagan! This year’s program includes E.L. Katz’s action-packed dialog-free post-apocalyptic nightmare Azrael, as well as In Our Blood a found footage shocker from documentarian-turned-horror-maestro Pedro Kos, and Rita from Jayro Bustamante who’s 2019 sleeper hit La Llorona grabbed the indie horror scene by the throat.

Needless to say, there are hundreds of movies at Fantasia that we can’t wait to sink our teeth into (including something called Chainsaws Are Singing which the fest has described as “Monty Python meets Texas Chainsaw Massacre meets Les Misérables!?!). Below are the 10 horror movies we’re most excited to see and review for...

by Eric Blume

A young Magimel in Benoît Jacquot's A Single Girl (1995).

This weekend, we’re celebrating one of French cinema’s greatest actors, Benoît Magimel, who turns 50 today.

Magimel exploded upon the industry in the mid 1990s, making a string of pictures right after his 21st birthday that involved collaborations with several big names. Benoît Jacquot used his broad, handsome face and hooded eyes to great effect in 1995’s A Single Girl opposite Virginie Ledoyen. The two actors have a truthful, easy spark between them that’s quintessential French post-teen. The next year, he was featured in the excellent Thieves, by then-huge director André Téchiné, alongside two of the country’s finest, Daniel Auteuil and Catherine Deneuve...

Stars: Virginie Ledoyen, Paul Hamy, Sandrine Bonnaire, Francis Renaud | Written by Annelyse Batrel, Ludovic Lefebvre | Directed by Alexandre Bustillo, Julien Maury

Two detectives with entirely different work methods are sent to the sleepy French mountain town of Roquenoir. One is investigating a series of gruesome deaths. The other is searching for some missing local children. Soon, they realise their cases are connected… by an old folklore legend of a malevolent creature, the terrifying incarnation of the Soul Eater.

The Soul Eater is a suspenseful tale of small-town horror, very much akin to similar films set in abandoned “ghost” towns. The kinds of towns synonymous with closely guarding its secrets and a weariness of outsiders. And here the audience is very much an outsider, learning what’s happening at the same time as the film’s two protagonists – Franck and Elizabeth – which the film is very much mystery-driven.

However, once the...

French actor Judith Godrèche has lodge a rape complaint against filmmaker Benoît Jacquot, newspaper Le Monde reports.

Godrèche, who met Jacquot when she was 14 years old and the director was 39, accuses him of “predation” and “violent rape of a minor under 15 years old committed by a person in authority.” She has filed her complaint with France’s Juvenile Protection Brigade.

According to French newspaper Le Monde, Jacquot denies the claims, telling the outlet theirs was a “loving” relationship.

Godrèche and Jacquot met in 1986 on the set of his movie “Les Mendiants,” which was released two years later. Despite the 25 year age gap, they began a relationship which went on for six years, during which time the actor says she was “in [Jacquot’s] grip.” She also starred in his 1990 film “La Desenchantee.”

“It’s a story like the stories of children who are kidnapped and who grow up without seeing the world...

You don’t need to have lived in the proverbial middle of nowhere to understand the kind of terror Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury’s The Soul Eater mines from the fictional Roquenoix. As shot by Simon Roca, this remote hamlet in northeastern France isn’t a ghost town so much as a burial ground where humans and buildings alike are waiting to rot. A grandiose sanatorium once towered over the tree-shrouded hills, bringing in enough cash and tourists to fill the village’s coffers. But when a motorway was built across the valley, the tourists disappeared, the sanatorium was abandoned; and the few who stayed behind were left to wrestle with an ancestral legend and a series of murders that may or may not be connected with it.

The single most terrifying thing in The Soul Eater isn’t the titular devourer, but that spectral, lifeless town where its victims are stranded.

Mr Richard Armitage, book the kitchen fitters and treat yourself to one of those taps that dispenses sparkling water, because you’re about to get paid. Netflix has confirmed that two new UK-set Harlan Coben adaptations are on the way, from the team behind Fool Me Once, Stay Close and The Stranger.

Next up for the Coben book-to-screen treatment in the UK is Missing You. Published in 2014, it’s the story of police detective Kat Donovan, whose life – in true Harlan Coben tradition – is turned upside down when her missing fiancé Josh (it was Jeff in the book) suddenly reappears on a dating site. Expect secrets, intrigue and grisly deaths to play out against a backdrop of expansive Carrera marble kitchen islands, Heals sofas, and £80k Range Rovers.

No cast has yet been announced for Missing You, but filming starts in spring 2024 so we can expect to hear who’ll be in it soon.

Founded in 2012, Paris-based WTFilms, run by Gregory Chambet and Dimitri Stephanides, has built a strong reputation as a sales agent for break-out genre pics and has recently diversified into production, to access hit projects. As competition ramps up for more ambitious projects with strong theatrical potential, Chambet decided to move to Los Angeles in mid-2023, while Stephanides remains based in Paris.

“At WTFilms, we aim to continue to work on both sides of the Atlantic,” explains Chambet. “In the current market it’s important to invest in projects by talented directors, with innovative concepts, budgeted above $5 million. It makes sense for me to be based here because we work a lot with partners here and L.A. is a key talent hub. We’re on the lookout for talent from all around the world. There are really exciting genre directors popping up everywhere – in North America and also in Latin America and Asia.

This is Harlan Coben’s world, we just live in it.

The US thriller author is a one-man content factory for Netflix, which is currently ploughing its way through his back catalogue in search of more twist-stuffed mysteries to follow in the vein of Fool Me Once, Stay Close and The Stranger. And more is exactly what they’ve found. On the press circuit for Fool Me Once, the latest Coben novel to receive the page-to-screen treatment, the writer confirmed the next of his books lined up for Netflix: 2004’s Just One Look.

Speaking to RadioTimes.com, Coben announced: “We’re doing one right now in Poland based off my book Just One Look, we’re filming and Netflix Poland is working on. Also working on one in South America, believe it or not.”

Netflix Poland is already behind existing Polish-language Coben adaptations The Woods (2020) and Hold Tight (2022), two stories...

The immediate flaw in any attempt to stack the twelve extant Harlan Coben TV thrillers in order of greatness is that none of them are exactly great. Pretty much all of them though, are compulsive viewing and will pull you through a bucking and twisting story at the speed of a beagle on the scent of a nearby sausage. They’re packed with incident and revelations, and are generally performed by a charismatic cast so big that you’ll never quite meet them all, let alone tire of their company. Binge-watches par excellence, each one of these series is precision-designed to be gulped down in very few bites.

As these stories all shop for plot in the same aisle, chances are that if you enjoy one Harlan Coben thriller, you’ll enjoy the others. They’re all filled with cliff-hangers, twists, secret identities, surprise resurrections, flashback wigs, and oh-no-it-was-you-all-along reveals.

French filmmakers Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo (Inside, Leatherface, The Deep House) are back with The Soul Eater, and we’ve got a new image for you today.

Check it out below, along with a better look at a previously released shot above.

The upcoming movie is an adaptation of the novel by Alexis Laipsker.

In The Soul Eater, “The chilling drama unfolds against the backdrop of a mountain village where an old legend about a malevolent creature resurfaces following the disappearance of local children and a series of violent and gruesome deaths.”

Virginie Ledoyen (Rabid Dogs, The Beach), Paul Hamy (Get In), and Sandrine Bonnaire star.

The directors reteam with Kandisha cinematographer Simon Roca for their latest.

The Soul Eater is produced by Phase 4 Productions and Place du Marché Productions and will receive a theatrical release in France. No word yet on a US release date. Stay tuned.

Juliette Binoche, Marion Cotillard and Jacques Audiard are among 500 French cinema professionals to have signed an open letter in support of a silent march for peace in Paris this Sunday.

The initiative – created in response to the Israel-Hamas conflict and its ongoing reverberations around the world – is being spearheaded by the newly launched Une Autre Voix (Another Voice) collective.

“This fratricidal war affects us all, and regardless of our reasons or affinities on each side of the wall, we want it to cease and that both peoples finally live in peace,” reads the letter.

“This is why we are organizing a silent, united, humanist and peaceful march that will open with a single long white banner. No political claims nor slogans. White flags, white handkerchiefs are welcome.”

Belgian-Moroccan actress Lubna Azabal presides over the Une Autre Voix collective which also features French...

Other signatories include Isabelle Adjani, Jacques Audiard and Michel Hazanavicius.

More than 500 leading figures from the French film and cultural industries have signed a letter calling for a silent march on Sunday (November 19) in Paris in response to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

Marion Cotillard, Melanie Laurent, Isabelle Adjani, Nathalie Baye, Jacques Audiard, Christophe Honore and Michel Hazanavicius are among the actors, filmmakers, agents and producers who have called for “a silent march of solidarity, humanism and peace”. The initiative was organised by Le Collectif Une Autre Voix (Another Voice) and spearheaded by the group’s President Lubna Azabal, a Belgian...

The French mini series The Island Of 30 Coffins (L'île Aux 30 Cercueils) is mystery thriller with apparent supernatural elements. A surgeon, Christine Vorski (Virginie Ledoyen), receives a video on her phone. It indicates that her stillborn child was in fact murdered. She heads for her former home to investigate the matter: the island of Sarek, a place she has not set foot on in well over a decade. While she's on the ferry to the island, an attempt is made on her life.

The Island Of 30 Coffins is based on the novel L'Île Aux Trente Cercueils by Maurice Leblanc. The English translation is known as The Secret Of Sarek and is readily available as an ebook. This is the second TV adaptation of the book. The first was in 1979, starring Claude Jade as Véronqiue d'Hergemont, the character whom Christine Vorski is an updated version of. It was a...

Earlier this year, it was announced that the last horror film from the filmmaking duo of Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo would be an adaptation of the Alexis Laipsker novel The Soul Eater (a.k.a. Le mangeur d’âmes), with Virginie Ledoyen (The Beach), Paul Hamy (The Ornithologist), and Sandrine Bonnaire (Women at War) taking on the lead roles. Now Deadline reports that WTFilms will be presenting The Soul Eater, which is currently in post-production, to potential buyers at the upcoming American Film Market. That presentation will include a screening of an early promo of the film. Along with that report comes the unveiling of a creepy first look image, which can be seen at the bottom of this article.

The Soul Eater has the following synopsis: “He didn’t scream. They never scream.” Some well-kept secrets sometimes turn out to be too heavy to bear… When the disappearance...

Up next from French filmmaking duo Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo, best known for their ultra-violent slasher Inside and aquatic haunted house tale The Deep House, is an adaptation of grisly thriller The Soul Eater by Alexis Laipsker. Thanks to Deadline, a new image teases the eerie horror feature.

Maury announced production on the film earlier this year via Instagram, the seventh feature film for Maury and Bustillo.

In The Soul Eater, “The chilling drama unfolds against the backdrop of a mountain village where an old legend about a malevolent creature resurfaces following the disappearance of local children and a series of violent and gruesome deaths.”

The directors reteam with Kandisha cinematographer Simon Roca for their latest.

Virginie Ledoyen (Rabid Dogs, The Beach), Paul Hamy (Get In), and Sandrine Bonnaire star.

The novel’s official synopsis also indicates another bloody genre film for the filmmakers:

“‘He didn’t scream. They never scream.

Exclusive: Paris-based genre special WTFilms has boarded Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury’s horror thriller ‘The Soul Eater’ ahead of the AFM.

The chilling drama unfolds against the backdrop of a mountain village where an old legend about a malevolent creature resurfaces following the disappearance of local children and a series of violent and gruesome deaths.

Virginie Ledoyen (Just the Two of Us) and Paul Hamy (The Last Journey) co-star as two police detectives with very different methods who are sent to investigate the crimes. Sandrine Bonnaire (Happening) joins them in the cast.

The production is adapted from French writer Alexis Laipsker’s bestseller of the same name. WTFilms will screen a first promo for the French-language film which is in post-production.

Directorial duo Bustillo and Maury gained fans in the U.S. for their 2021 English-language supernatural horror The Deep House, which was acquired by Blumhouse Television and Epix for North America,...

Despite plenty of incidental action, Corsini’s film about a woman’s painful return to Corsica leaves too many questions unanswered

Despite some warm and sympathetic performances and lovely cinematography, there is something weirdly glib in director and co-writer Catherine Corsini’s new film in which a summer of drama gives us supposedly tragic personal discoveries uneasily coexisting with some almost photo love-style holiday romance.

Khedidja (Aïssatou Diallo Sagna) is a black woman in her 40s living in Paris with her two teen daughters – promising student Jess (Suzy Bemba) and tearaway Farah (Esther Gohourou) – and working as a nanny for a wealthy white couple, Sylvia (Virginie Ledoyen) and Marc (Denis Podalydès), who have little kids. Marc also has a spoilt moody teen daughter (Lomane de Dietrich) from his first marriage. Sylvia and Marc are heading off with their family for the summer to their villa in Calvi, Corsica and they...

Miou Miou as Nona, in the French TV miniseries “Nona And Her Daughters.” Photo credit: Manuel Moutier. Courtesy of MHz Choice

“Nona And Her Daughters” (“Nona Et Ses Filles”) is a character-driven dramedy miniseries from French TV that successfully spans a few genres. Nona (Miou-Miou), after a lifetime devoted to advocacy for women’s rights, shockingly finds herself pregnant at 70. Even worse, the only man she’s been with is proven Not to be the father by a DNA test. Nona has been fiercely independent, heading their city’s equivalent of Planned Parenthood after raising triplet daughters Emmanuelle (Virginie Ledoyen), Gabrielle (Clotilde Hesme), and George (Valerie Donzelli) on her own, without ever being at all sure who sired them. Or caring, for that matter. The trio is about to turn 44, and even more surprised than Nona by this seeming impossibility.

The diverse set of women rally together around this event.

Paris-based Playtime has unveiled a strong Cannes film market sales slate, which includes competition titles “About Dry Grasses” and “Homecoming.”

“About Dry Grasses” is by Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan, who won the Palme d’Or in 2014 for “Winter Sleep.” The film follows Samet, a young art teacher, who is finishing his fourth year of compulsory service in a remote village in Anatolia. After a turn of events he can hardly make sense of, he loses his hopes of escaping the grim life he seems to be stuck in, and hopes that his encounter with fellow teacher Nuray will help him overcome his angst. Deniz Celiloğlu, Merve Dizdar and Musab Ekici are among the cast.

“Homecoming,” by French director Catherine Corsini who won the 2021 Queer Palm for “The Divide,” follows Khédidja, who minds a wealthy Parisian family’s children for a summer in Corsica. She brings along her own two...

‘Homecoming’ was added to the Cannes line-up earlier this week.

Homecoming (Le Retour) director Catherine Corsini, producer Chaz Productions and sales agent Playtime have defended the film’s Cannes Competition inclusion amid what they claim are false accusations of on-set unrest.

Earlier this month, French media reported Corsini had been accused of harassment of crew, other crew members were accused of inappropriate acts against two actors, and the Cnc had pulled funding due to an intimate scene involving minors that was added to the script without being pre-approved in the shooting schedule.

Corsini and her longtime producing partner Elisabeth Perez...

Leo Maidenberg’s Paris-based company Place du Marché Productions is developing a slate of French and international films and TV series with acclaimed talents, including Daphna Levin, the creator of the Israeli series “Euphoria,” as well as Sarah Kaminsky (“Raid Dingue”) and Leïla Sy (“Banlieusards”).

Maidenberg, who launched Place du Marché in 2018 after a career in diplomacy and made his producing debut with Caroline Fourest’s politically charged action film “Sisters in Arms,” has teamed with Kim Younes at Elvie Productions on a pair of high concept Israeli series.

The first title produced by the two banners is “The Truth,” a police thriller series co-written and directed by Levin, whose credits also include the original Israeli series “In Therapy.” Set in Tel Aviv, “The Truth” opens on the day of the final verdict for the most controversial murder case in Israel, 10 years after the incident which took place in a high school gym.

The French filmmaking duo of Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo caught international attention with their debut feature, the brutal home invasion story Inside, in 2007. Since then, Maury and Bustillo have continued working in the horror genre, making the films Livid, Among the Living, Leatherface (a prequel to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), Kandisha, and The Deep House. Now Maury has taken to Instagram to announce that they have officially started production on their seventh feature, an adaptation of the Alexis Laipsker novel The Soul Eater (a.k.a. Le mangeur d’âmes). Laipsker also celebrated the start of production, tweeting out a promotional image that reveals The Soul Eater stars Virginie Ledoyen (The Beach), Paul Hamy (The Ornithologist), and Sandrine Bonnaire (Women at War). You can take a look at that image at the bottom of this article.

Maury shared an image of a clapperboard that reveals the cinematographer on The Soul Eater is Simon Roca,...

French filmmaking duo Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo, best known for their ultra-violent slasher Inside and aquatic haunted house tale The Deep House, are tackling an adaptation of the grisly thriller The Soul Eater by Alexis Laipsker.

Maury announced on Instagram that production has officially begun on The Soul Eater, the seventh feature film for Maury and Bustillo. Author Laipsker also took to Twitter to share that production is now underway, along with artwork that teases an ominous tone below.

The novel’s official synopsis indicates another bloody genre film for the filmmakers:

“‘He didn’t scream. They never scream.’ Some well-kept secrets sometimes turn out to be too heavy to bear. When the disappearance of children and bloody murders multiply uneventfully in a small mountain village, an old legend shrouded in sulfur resurfaces. Urged on by their respective departments, Commander Guardiano and Captain of the Gendarmerie De Rolan are...

Marie Antoinette’s reign at PBS begins on March 19. The public broadcaster’s new series about the infamous French queen stars Emilia Schüle as the young Austrian archduchess who is married off to Louis, the dauphin of France (Louis Cunningham). It’s just the latest on-screen depiction of the legendary royal. Here are five movies about Marie Antoinette to watch before you binge the new show.

Kirsten Dunst starred in Sofia Coppola’s ‘Marie Antoinette’

At 15 she became a bride. At 19 she became a queen. By 20 she was a legend.

Sofia Coppola's punk-rock period drama "Marie Antoinette" was released 15 years ago today on October 20, 2006. pic.twitter.com/EkeLeSQ8N1

— The Academy (@TheAcademy) October 20, 2021

Kirsten Dunst played a young Marie Antoinette in Sofia Coppola’s lavish, occasionally anachronistic 2006 period drama Maria Antoinette. It covers some of the same territory as the new PBS series, including the young queen’s awkward early years at Versailles.

Screen’s team looks at which titles are lining up for a potential slot in either Official Selection or one of the parallel sections.

Speculation is mounting about which titles could make the line-up for the 76th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, which runs May 16-27 this year.

The submission process for Official Selection officially closes on March 21, ahead of the traditional Paris press conference in mid-April (the date is currently to be confirmed).

As filmmakers, producers and sales agents scramble to submit final titles, Screen’s team assesses which films from around the world are lining up for...

Le retour

Formerly titled “La Loi du plus fort”, Catherine Corsini began filming on Le retour back in September of last year. Set in Corsica, Virginie Ledoyen, Denis Podalydès, Aïssatou Diallo Sagna and Esther Gohourou are among the on-screen distribution here. Corsini last premiered hospital ER room has a trauma center and empathy and connection – in La fracture in Cannes back in ’21.

Gist: Written by Corsini and Naïla Guiguet, the story centres on 40-something Kheìdidja, who works for a wealthy Parisian family who offers her to take care of the children during a summer in Corsica – the occasion for her and her daughters, Jessica and Farah, to return to this island which they left 15 years ago in tragic circumstances.…...

Click here to read the full article.

Everyone loves the Hollywood holiday classics — from It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Story to Home Alone and Die Hard (yes, it is a classic, too – don’t get us started).

But after the 100th rerun, one’s holiday spirit can start to sag, and nostalgia for those festive evergreens can turn toxic.

So The Hollywood Reporter‘s international team has come up with this alternative list of holiday favorites from outside the U.S.

Our eclectic dirty dozen, including a French murder mystery, a Canadian horror classic and an anime retelling of the Christmas story, are the perfect counterprogramming for anyone looking for new ideas this festive season.

Merry Christmas

2005

‘Merry Christmas’

Christian Carion’s World War I drama, about the real-life Christmas truce that broke out on the Western Front in 1914 — amid the horrors of the war, a true holiday miracle — features Diane Kruger,...

Actress Isabelle Adjani, the star of the new France-produced 4-part miniseries "The King's Favorite", directed by Josée Dayan, poses for the latest issue of "Madame Figaro" magazine:

"...enigmatic 16th-century noblewoman and courtier 'Diane de Poitiers' (Adjani) is 'The King's Favorite'...

"...enjoying a complicated relationship with young French king, 'Henry II' (Hugo Becker)...

"...that lasted more than twenty years..."

Cast also includes Samuel Labarthe, Virginie Ledoyen and Gérard Depardieu.

Click the images to enlarge...

Casting is complete and cameras are currently rolling on Catherine Corsini‘s Le retour. We recently reported that Aïssatou Diallo Sagna was the first to join the project, and now we learned that Esther Gohourou (breakout in Maïmouna Doucouré’s Cuties) and Suzy Bemba will also topline the film and they’ll be supported by Lomane de Dietrich, Cédric Appietto, Marie-Ange Géronimi, Harold Orsoni, Jean Michelangeli, Virginie Ledoyen and Denis Podalydès. Cineuropa reports that Chaz Productions’ Élisabeth Perez will produce. Corsini reteams with cinematographer Jeanne Lapoirie (who has Robin Campillo’s Vazaha to be released next year). Production will last close to two months and a Cannes premiere is entirely possible.…...

Isabelle Adjani is re-teaming with “The King’s Favorite” director Josée Dayan on the six-part mystery thriller “Belphégor.”

The acclaimed actress stars as the enigmatic 16th-century noblewoman and courtier Diane de Poitiers in “The King’s Favorite,” which premiered at the Unifrance Rendez-Vous on Monday.

The €7.6 million (7.5 million), four-part series, produced by Dayan’s Passion Films and sold internationally by France TV Distribution, examines de Poitiers’ complicated relationship with the young French king, Henry II (played by Hugo Becker), that lasted more than two decades. The large ensemble cast also includes Samuel Labarthe, Virginie Ledoyen and Gérard Depardieu.

Adjani next stars in an action-comedy helmed by Mélanie Laurent, which is set to go into production next week, Adjani told Variety.

Adjani is also set to star in a TV thriller alongside Benjamin Biolay likewise to be directed by Dayan later this year and described as in the style of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s “Diabolique.

French acting icon Isabelle Adjani says she is set to co-star opposite Adèle Exarchopoulos in a Mission Impossible-style action comedy directed by Mélanie Laurent.

The feature is inspired by Bastien Vivès, Jérôme Mulot and Florent Ruppert’s French graphic novel ‘La Grande Odalisque’ about a gang of female expert thieves targeting high-end loot.

Adjani spilt the beans on the new role in an interview with the French newspaper ‘Nice Matin’ on Thursday.

“It will be a female ensemble film set between Paris and Corsica with Mélanie [Laurent] facing the camera and Adèle Exarchopoulos,” she said. “We are awaiting the reply of a fourth actress.”

She described the production as a “female Mission Impossible” adding “that is the touch of Mélanie Laurent who wants to do something out of the ordinary for France.”

Adjani is coming off a busy 2022, with credits including starring roles in François Ozon’s Fassbinder tribute and...

Exclusive: Mario Bava’s cult crime movie Rabid Dogs is getting an English-Language remake from in-demand Hollywood scribes Samuel Franco and Evan Kilgore.

The film’s original producer Alfredo Leone is aboard as exec-producer.

Franco and Kilgore have acquired the remake rights to the 1974 feature which follows the bungled robbery of three violent criminals and the hostages they take – including a young woman, a middle-aged man, and his child – as they attempt to make a clean getaway from the police.

An adaptation of short story Man and Boy by Michael J. Carroll, Rabid Dogs was a departure for Bava from his colorful horror films. The film had a challenged journey to screen. Mid-shoot, producer Roberto Loyola declared bankruptcy, resulting in the-then incomplete film being shelved. The movie remained unseen for more than two decades, but has since been released in multiple home ent versions, with various scenes being partially re-shot,...

Guillaume Brac's film All Hands on Deck is exclusively showing on Mubi in most countries in the series The New Auteurs, as well as the retrospective Summer Light: Films by Guillaume Brac.Just over a year ago, the director of the Cnsad (Conservatoire National Supérieur d’Art Dramatique—the Higher National Conservatoire for Dramatic Art), Claire Lasne-Darcueil, asked me to write a feature-length fiction film for a dozen young actors from the class of 2020. With one proviso: I had to shoot between summer and autumn 2019, so that the film would be finished by the time they graduated.I immediately saw this as an opportunity to paint the fictional portrait of a generation, just like Pascale Ferran did twenty-five years ago with L’âge des possibles, written for a class at the Théâtre National de Strasbourg. Or the filmmakers of two collections, Tous les garçons et les filles de leur âge and Les années lycée,...

Munich-based Beta Film, one of Europe’s biggest independent TV companies, has acquired worldwide distribution rights outside France to “The Island of Thirty Coffins,” a French series adaptation of a novel by “Lupin” author Maurice Leblanc.

An atmospheric crime thriller from Leblanc – whose Arsène Lupin character, created in 1905, inspired Netflix biggest foreign-language global hit “Lupin” – “The Island of Thirty Coffins” stars Virginie Ledoyen.

Directed by Frédéric Mermoud (“Les Revenants”) and written by Elsa Marpeau (“Capitaine Marleau”) and Florent Meyer (“Lupin”), its acquisition forms part of a planned far larger drive into French drama series by Beta Films.

“We shall try to acquire more and more French series in the upcoming months and years,” said Jérôme Vincendon, Beta Film exec VP international sales and acquisitions, French-speaking Europe. “We think it’s the right moment,” he added.

Once dominated in prime time by U.S. procedurals, France has seen its domestic TV...

The Most Important Thing is to Love: Mouret’s Loquacious Ode to Capricious Romance(s)

With narratives often constructed on the gossamer threads of human interactions, it’s hard to believe Emmanuel Mouret is unleashing his tenth feature in the twenty plus years he’s been making films. His latest, titled in English as Love Affair(s), which doesn’t quite catch the wistful benevolence of the actual title, The Things We Say, the Things We Do, reflects Mouret’s consistent impulse for showcasing some of Gallic cinema’s most winsome flavors of the month.

From Dolores Chaplin in Laissons Lucie faire! (2000), Virginie Ledoyen in 2007’s Shall We Kiss?…...

Céline Sciamma's Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Portrait de la jeune fille en feu) has been awarded this year's Queer Palm prize at Cannes. It is the first time the prize has gone to a female director.

The jury was presided over by actress Virginie Ledoyen and composed of director Claire Duguet, comedian Kee-Yoon Kim, and directors Marcio Reolon and Filipe Matzembacher.

"The jury was struck by the director’s artistic mastering and deeply touched by the vision she brings upon artistic creation, [the] blazing heart of this film. We were also greatly moved by ...

Céline Sciamma's Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Portrait de la jeune fille en feu) has been awarded this year's Queer Palm prize at Cannes. It is the first time the prize has gone to a female director.

The jury was presided over by actress Virginie Ledoyen and composed of director Claire Duguet, comedian Kee-Yoon Kim, and directors Marcio Reolon and Filipe Matzembacher.

"The jury was struck by the director’s artistic mastering and deeply touched by the vision she brings upon artistic creation, [the] blazing heart of this film. We were also greatly moved by ...

Mubi's retrospective The Parallel Worlds of Olivier Assayas is showing May 3 – June 11, 2019 in the United States.Cold WaterWhen a filmmaker’s body of work is as prolific as it is varied, the paths to profile split two: the explanatory chronology that threads together A-to-b episodes of a life, and the thematic retrofit that groups one film with an unsuspecting other. But both are really about the same, hopeful thing: that the right arrangement of themes and biographic detail will yield some incandescent truth about their practice. With Olivier Assayas, the truths are dropped generously in correspondence—“Cinema has to be light,” he has told Kent Jones, and later, Film Comment1—always too articulate and discerning an interviewee to not betray his past as a writer and (reluctant) critic at Cahiers du cinéma, then helmed by Serge Daney and Toubiana. Assayas is, in fact, generous enough to have written a memoir,...

Notre Dame

French director Valérie Donzelli makes her fifth feature with Notre Dame, in which she will star in and produce herself, alongside Mina Driouch for Les Films de Francoise, Alice Girard and Eduoard Weil for Rectangle Productions, Genevieve Lemal for Scope Pictures (Belgium) and France 2 Cinema. Amongst her cast members are Pierre Deladonchamps, Thomas Scimeca, Bouli Lanners, Virginie Ledoyen, Isabelle Candelier and Philippe Katerine. Donzelli’s effervescent debut, Queen of Hearts (2009) played at Locarno, while her 2011 sophomore film Declaration of War became a huge hit after premiering in Critics’ Week at Cannes, going on to snag a handful of Cesar nods plus earning the distinction of being France’s submission for the Best Foreign Language Film for Academy Award consideration.…...

Mathias Malzieu is set to direct “A Mermaid in Paris,” a romantic comedy/fantasy with Reda Kateb and Clémence Poesy.

Kinology is handling international sales on the film, as well as co-producing with Wonder Films and Entre Chien et Loup. Sony will distribute the film in France. Virginie Ledoyen, Rossy de Palma and Eric Cantona round out the cast.

Malzieu, who made his feature debut with the animated film “Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart,” wrote “A Mermaid in Paris” with Stéphane Landowski (“Rise of a Star”).

“‘A Mermaid in Paris’ will be Mathias’ first live-action film and it will mark the birth of a visionary auteur in the veins of Michel Gondry — he has an amazingly rich imagination, unusual way of telling stories full of whimsical charm and talent for creating endearing characters,” said Gregoire Melin, founder of Kinology.

Malzieu, who’s also a singer and an artist, wrote a...

Stars: Virginie Ledoyen, Cyprien Fouquet, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, László Szabó, Smaïl Mekki | Written and Directed by Olivier Assayas

This 1994 film from Olivier Assayas (known recently for Clouds of Sils Maria and Personal Shopper) ends ambiguously, with a blank piece of paper. It’s an image that aptly sums up this intriguing yet frustrating film as a whole: a work of countless questions and precious few answers, as esoteric as something from the 1970s period of its setting. It’s like a Michelangelo Antonioni art piece, except shot by John Cassavetes. If we’re meant to come away feeling as ill-informed as its teenage antiheroes then I guess Cold Water has succeeded as art.

The production design and the film stock produces a stunning evocation of the early ‘70s. We’re never told the time period explicitly – we just know. Early on, Assayas shoots with handheld immediacy, employing close-ups and deliberately awkward framing,...

As this year’s Cannes Film Festival continues to wind down, with all eyes on Saturday’s Palme d’Or presentation, other sections of the lauded French festival are keeping busy announcing their own big winners. Just yesterday, Directors’ Fortnight bestowed its highest honor, the Art Cinema Award, to Gaspar Noé for his “Climax.” Today, the Un Certain Regard section is revealing its winners, and Ali Abbasi’s gender-bending fairy tale “Border” took the top prize.

In IndieWire’s review, Eric Kohn wrote that it “builds out such an unusual premise that it risks devolving into quirky inanity, but Abbasi grounds the narrative in an emotional foundation even as it flies off the rails.” Neon purchased the film out of the festival.

This year’s Un Certain Regard jury was presided over by Benicio Del Toro, along with Annemarie Jacir (Palestinian director and writer), Kantemir Balagov (Russian director), Virginie Ledoyen (French actress), and Julie Huntsinger.

Sofia, Girl, Donbass also take prizes.

Ali Abbasi’s Border has taken home the top prize in Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard strand. Sofia, Girl, Donbass and The Death And The Others were also winners.

Neon swooped on the Us rights to Border during the festival; Metropolitan Filmexport took French rights pre-festival. Films Boutique handles sales.

Border tells the story of a border guard played by Eva Melander who has the ability to smell human emotions and catch smugglers. When she comes across a mysterious man with a smell that confounds her detection, she is forced to confront...

Sofia, Girl, Donbass also take prizes.

Ali Abbasi’s Border has taken home the top prize in Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard strand. Sofia, Girl, Donbass and The Death And The Others were also winners.

Neon swooped on the Us rights to Border during the festival; Metropolitan Filmexport took French rights pre-festival. Films Boutique handles sales.

Border tells the story of a border guard played by Eva Melander who has the ability to smell human emotions and catch smugglers. When she comes across a mysterious man with a smell that confounds her detection, she is forced to confront...